Tesla earned $105 million in net profit in the fourth quarter, ending the year on a positive note and declaring 2019 a turning point for the volatile electric car company.
Details: Record 2019 deliveries helped drive revenues up 19% over the prior quarter, but profit margins fell because Tesla sold more of the lower-priced Model 3. Shares jumped 7% in after-hours trading on Wednesday to $621.89.
2020 appears to be the year that Corporate America is serious about addressing climate change, but it remains unclear if venture capitalists plan to join the fight.
The big picture: Many VCs still have painful scars from the mid-to-late aughts, when they lost billions on investments in "cleantech" companies.
Senior House Democrats are on the cusp of unveiling a five-year, $760 billion infrastructure package that "places a major emphasis on climate change," Politico reported Tuesday night.
What's next: Democrats are slated to discuss the plan in their caucus meeting later this morning, per Politico and Roll Call.
The latest edition of the Energy Department's "transportation fact of the week" series shows that much of the freight moved by truck isn't traveling that far.
Why it matters: As medium and heavy-duty electric trucks enter the market, which is slowly starting to happen, there are many use cases that don't require massive range or far-flung charging networks.
Tesla's Q4 earnings report will come Wednesday as the volatile Silicon Valley electric automaker's stock is near all-time highs with a recent run of positive news, including record 2019 deliveries and the recent launch of its Chinese factory.
Why it matters: Tesla is arguably the most important corporate actor in the movement of electric vehicles toward the mainstream, even as new manufacturers emerge and legacy automakers roll out new models.
A report this month by the activist group Avaaz alleges YouTube is "driving millions of people to watch climate misinformation" daily.
What they found: One finding is that when users search for "global warming," 16% of the top 100 "related videos" in the "up next" feature had climate disinformation. Another is that major brands are often unaware that their ads run on these videos.
Two companies with different climate technologies — trapping emissions from industrial plants and removing CO2 already in the atmosphere — are teaming up.
Driving the news: The Canadian firm Svante and the Swiss company Climeworks AG have a new "joint development agreement" to pilot the combination of the former's industrial capture system alongside Climeworks direct air capture (DAC) tech.
